The postman just delivered my copy of LXF159 this morning. I've not read everything yet, but I had a quick flick through and skim-read the Package Manager article.

'Twas was good; confirms my high opinion of pacman and apt-get while my personal experiences of Yum/RPM (via CentOS) have been less than stellar - at least when to comes to removing packages. Yum likes removing lots of dependencies when removing a package... even if other packages you aren't removing depend on them still. RPM gets around this, but corrupts Yum's package database and Yum then needs to rebuild it... all in all not a positive experience.

Anyway... the error.

Page 35, the Verdict page.

4th: openSuse and 5th: Gentoo have the same Web address and synopsis (that for openSuse), while the synopsis for Gentoo is in the 'Over to you...' section.

Wasn't sure whether to point it out or not, but in the end it's better to notify of errata than not.

Oh goody, someone has started a thread to gripe about #159, please allow me to join in.
"Now that Microsoft is putting a lot of its energy behind a new release designed for a form factor that doesn't exist yet - a desktop PC with a touch interface", Graham tells us in his editorial opinion. Well, if we are to ignore the offerings from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Sony (to name the few manufacturers I've noticed), then I suppose that might be true, but I can't help thinking that while the form factor might not be as standardised as the original IBM PC clone and they might not be as popular as conventional desktops, I wouldn't say that touch screen PCs are close to non-existence.

Rhakios wrote:Well, if we are to ignore the offerings from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Sony (to name the few manufacturers I've noticed), then I suppose that might be true,

I happened to be in PC World yesterday and walked past a display of HP TouchSmart All-in-One Desktop PCs, one of which was being prodded enthusiastically by two teenage girls.

The idea of a touchscreen desktop leaves me baffled. Why would I want one? I sit pretty far back from my monitors so a touchscreen would just not work as I'd have to stretch to reach.

I could maybe see it for a laptop, except that I've spent the last nine years (that was when I bought my first TFT) being obsessive about don't-poke-the-screen-because-that-is-bad. Combine that with the fact that there is nothing I hate more than someone poking greasy fingers on my monitor and touchscreens seem worse than pointless - they seem like a personal nightmare.

I am left with the impression that it's less a tech 'advance' and more a company saying "We think it's cool. So we're gonna do it, and you're going to buy it."

My greatest concern with touchscreen PC implementations, however, is support. I'm fully expecting many of the touchscreens to work on the installed OS (say, Windows 7 or 8 ) but have drivers that look at Vista or XP and say, "Sorry, not gonna do that." Or worse, outright refuse to run with linux, in the way of many "winmodems" (back in the day) or WLAN cards in the early days of Intel's "Centrino" specification. My primary system, even now, has a NIC that just doesn't have linux drivers; while that system is pretty much gaming-only (and therefore Windows only) it doesn't change that fact that I'd like to have Arch or Debian on there - or both - but the NIC manufacturer doesn't want to support linux.

Paradigm Shifter wrote:The idea of a touchscreen desktop leaves me baffled. Why would I want one? I sit pretty far back from my monitors so a touchscreen would just not work as I'd have to stretch to reach.

.... I've spent the last nine years (that was when I bought my first TFT) being obsessive about don't-poke-the-screen-because-that-is-bad. Combine that with the fact that there is nothing I hate more than someone poking greasy fingers on my monitor and touchscreens seem worse than pointless - they seem like a personal nightmare.

I am left with the impression that it's less a tech 'advance' and more a company saying "We think it's cool. So we're gonna do it, and you're going to buy it."

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say here.

I can appreciate that touchscreens are probably handy for mobile gadgets (not that I myself have any interest in such a thing) but desktop computers?

Touch is fine for mobile kit, nothing better in fact.
But for the desktop, it is in the same league as 3D and videophones. Applications that the tech industry wants to sell, but nobody really wants to buy.

Let's face it, video phones have been around for years, and almost nobody uses them more than once or twice a year, if at all.
3D is still a washout, despite large advertising spend.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!

Agree again. I remember a few years ago when the suggestion of touch-screen desktops came up (on Slashdot), early days, someone made a comment along the lines of why should they reach out their arm in the air and put greasemarks on their screen, when they can instead make small movements of a mouse with their arm resting on their desk?

I do even better - I use a trackball and can move my cursor all over the screen with just a thumb movement, not even my arm.

Unsolved mysteries of the Universe, No 13 :-
How many remakes of Anna Karenina does the World need?

I'd have nowhere to put it; none of the rooms in my house are big enough to get a decent distance away from something that big!

Besides, the pixel pitch on an 82" 1080p screen would be appalling. I was half hoping that it'd be a higher res than that, but no... another page on their site says 1080p. That's a DPI of just over 26, or a pixel pitch of 0.9455mm...

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:Our largest screen is a 23" monitor, and that's in the living room as our main TV. More than adequate. (and I had an argument getting one that big)

I'm inclined to know what you mean, I bought a 32" TV a few years ago and didn't realise how big it would be in my sitting room, I've got used to it now though. Actually, something 28" with minimum bezel would probably be best.

Still, if someone offered me one of those 82" touch-screen jobs for free, I'd find somewhere to put it.

Rhakios wrote:I'm inclined to know what you mean, I bought a 32" TV a few years ago and didn't realise how big it would be in my sitting room, I've got used to it now though. Actually, something 28" with minimum bezel would probably be best.

My wife wouldn't stand for a big screen.The main criteria is how easy it is to hide. Ours is in the middle of a large bookcase, and is concealed with an oil painting when not in use.

Still, if someone offered me one of those 82" touch-screen jobs for free, I'd find somewhere to put it.

If I got one for free, I'd probably put it on eBay. Anyway grain like golfballs in terms of image.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!